1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive having a mechanism to limit position of the tray when the tray is transferred with sliding.
2. Related Art
A disk drive used to reproduce information on a disk such as a CD or a DVD includes: a tray to put a disk on and bring out/in the drive body; a drive part to put the disk on a turn table and rotate the disk; an optical pickup to reproduce information recorded on the disk; and a traverse unit equipped with a transporting device to move the optical pickup or the like. Also, the disk drive includes motors required for those constituents to work. The constituents can carry out needed operations through the respective motors.
Likewise, the tray is driven by a motor when it loads/unloads a disk into/out of the drive body with the disk placed thereon. Specifically, the tray has a rack provided on a side portion of its bottom face, which a gear meshes with the rack and the gear is driven to rotate by the motor. When the gear rotates, the rack meshing with the gear moves to transfer the tray with sliding.
In the structure for transferring the tray, the disk drive is provided with guiding parts to prevent the tray from moving in the transverse direction (a horizontal direction) and in the vertical direction (up-and-down direction). The guiding parts are basically constituted by a combination of a groove and a protrusion. Hence, it is desired to minimize the space where the guiding parts are disposed, so as to downsize and slim the whole disk drive; to simplify the shape of the guiding parts; and to simplify the molding die used for the purpose described above.
For example, JP-A-2001-155402 discloses “DISK LOADING MECHANISM,” which loads a disk without increasing the load to move the tray, almost changing the outside shape thereof and generating the state of being swung from left to right violently. As shown in FIG. 4 thereof, guiding parts (1a, 1b) are formed on the inner sides of the two ends of the chassis that are fitted from the bottom face side of the chassis into guide grooves located in the bottom face of the tray in addition to hook-shaped guiding parts (1c) to hold down upper portions at the two ends of the tray. However, it requires a space to form a guiding part in the width direction of the disk drive.
Incidentally, in case of precisely limiting position of the tray in the transverse and vertical directions, when the groove and protrusion provided on the chassis and the tray mesh with each other so as to be brought into their completely fitting condition, a difference in the dimensions of the groove and protrusion could cause a trouble in sliding transfer of the tray.